Tale Of Two Campaigns

Elizabeth Warren's campaign outraised the Scott Brown campaign by well over a million dollars in the pre-primary period, which ran from July 1 through August 17; she has now out-raised him by $7 million in the election cycle, although he came in with more than that left over from his January 2010 Miracle On The Charles. So, although they have now spent pretty equally, he still ended up with a little more cash on hand at the end of that reporting period.

For the full cycle, Warren has raised close to $28 million, spent $15.7 million, and had $12.3 million left in the bank.

Brown raised just under $21 million, spent $15.3 million, and had $14.1 million in the bank.

But Warren outspent Brown pretty significantly in that seven-week period: $4.9 million to $3.8 million.

Brown's spending is all message, no organization. Of the $3.8 million he spent, $2.8 million went straight to "placed media" -- ad buys. Another $360,000 went to direct mail. That only leaves about $600,000 for everything else.

By contrast, Warren spent $2.3 million on ad buys and a whopping $1.1 million on direct mail -- which still leaves about $1.5 million on the rest.

A big chunk of that, roughly a quarter-million dollars, went to Warren's Internet consultants.

But the big difference is payroll. The Warren campaign has a stunning 77 people on the payroll, compared to 20 on the slim Brown campaign.

One way to look at this is that as of mid-August, Brown had more money in the bank, and less payroll commited to pay from it -- leaving him with potentially a few million dollars extra advertising dollars to spend down the stretch.

The other view would be that Warren will make that deficit up because she is raising money at the faster clip -- and bear in mind, these numbers are from before Warren's nationally televised convention speech, which undoubtedly triggered a mini-avalanche of donations. And meanwhile, she's got a wide-ranging professional staff building toward the final get-out-the-vote operation.